


Welcome to the New/Old Normal

by HawkMoth



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Asylum of the Daleks, Gen, Pond Life, References to The God Complex, Written in September 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-11 19:22:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HawkMoth/pseuds/HawkMoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor gave them a gift. He meant well, didn't he?</p>
<p><i>"We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem."</i>*</p>
<p>Amy and Rory, Rory and Amy, coping. Or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to the New/Old Normal

**Author's Note:**

> (Written as a collective "you.")

******

You have been saved.

A new beginning in pretty house on a nice street is better than any number of horrific endings on some alien world or crashing spaceship or even Mother Earth.

Isn't it?

This is normal. (You've had practice, remember? Trying it out, the everyday life, until that blue envelope arrived. No question about leaving it all behind then, was there?) 

How could you say no to all this? Starting over. Being safe. A house with a lovely back garden where you can sit on warm evenings under the fairy lights with a bottle of wine and breathe easily.

(Until a flash and a crash brings home the Prodigal Daughter. With good news or bad, with the son-in-law or not. Some evenings you start to venture out but change your mind and remain indoors, trying not to notice if the wind rattles the windows or something makes the stairs creak.)

Normal is having a life. Having a job. Helping people and saving lives. Twirling and pouting for the camera. Night shifts and night shoots. Saving money for rainy days because the house and car never have to be paid for. Lucky, that, like the woman a few years back who won the lottery on her wedding day.

Normal, right?

(Except for having memories that you shouldn't. For remembering lives that never happened. Having doors in your head marked "Open Only in Event of Total Disaster." For craving a little more excitement than you get in everyday life. Or not.)

It's perfectly normal to set an extra place at the table on Christmas in case someone drops by unexpectedly. It's lovely when the doorbell rings and it's not carolers. It's even better if another guest appears out of nowhere and stories are swapped and idle remarks are shushed and the flirting gets a little out of hand. That's family. That's normal.

(But your family isn't. Of course families have issues and damage and things they don't talk about. Yours has all that and so much more. Time and space crossed and re-crossed. Violations of body and mind. Multiple deaths and many rebirths. So many things lost and never exactly found. A child you've known forever but will never really know at all. Trust betrayed, restored, and too many lies. Too much waiting.)

Normal is working on a top-up degree and moving up to senior staff. Normal is signing with a new agency and becoming a little more famous. It's learning to put up with things you may not like but have to accept. It's looking forward (don't look back) and not dwelling in the past (or futures that already happened). You were given a life to live. (Don't think about the ones you won't.)

Other holidays no one shows up at the door. (No blue box on the landing, no mini-explosions in the garden.) There are cards in the post without stamps and you try not to notice when the envelopes are a bit scorched.

Life continues and it's okay to sigh and roll your eyes when the phone is full of messages that ramble on and on and make the kind of sense no one else would understand. (Losing sleep if a message is delivered in person in the middle of the night is not okay because of course you'll worry when you've been told not to.)

(Definitely not normal: realizing your lovely house and its immediate surroundings have a built-in perception filter. Otherwise, what would the neighbors say?)

Getting someone in to help around the house is normal. A live-in Ood isn't.

Burying yourself in your work is normal. Lack of proper communication is normal. 

(But you're not. You never have been. You're going through the motions, you're trying so very hard to live out the life given back to you.)

Things change, people change (but somehow they stay the same). 

Giving up. Giving in. It happens all the time, right?

It's normal.

******

**Author's Note:**

> *From the broadcast version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (of course).


End file.
